Thread

Re: [GENERAL] Problem with 6.4 and "createdb -D"

Jeff Hoffmann <jeff@remapcorp.com> — 1998-11-13T19:25:38Z

>Jeff Hoffmann wrote:
>
>> i've just gotten around to upgrading to 6.4 on a couple of FreeBSD
(2.2.7)
>> servers, and i'm having problems creating databases in alternate
locations.
>> basically, here's what i did:
>>
>> 1) dumped the data from a 6.3.2 install
>> 2) compiled 6.4 (completely generically -- configure; make; make install)
>> 3) did the initdb, then started the postmaster
>> 4) did an "initlocation /mnt/ccd2/pgdata"
>> 5) tried to "createdb -D /mnt/ccd2/pgdata test", which gave me the
following
>> error:
>> www:/~:[11:42am]45% createdb -D /mnt/ccd2/pgdata test
>> ERROR:  Unable to locate path '/mnt/ccd2/pgdata/test'
>>         This may be due to a missing environment variable in the server
>> createdb: database creation failed on test.


>Chapter 7 deals with Disk Management and the first section is about
Alternate
>Locations.  It talks about a PGDATA2 environment variable.  I would guess
this
>is what you need to get it working.

you know, i was aware of the PGDATA2 environment variable, but i wasn't
using it with 6.3.2.  i have 4 locations set up, and since no one ever
mentioned PGDATA3, PGDATA4, etc., i just used the full path with createdb
and everything was peachy.  i guess i should have tried the PGDATA3,
PGDATA4, etc. because that works just fine in 6.4.  i still haven't found
any mention of it in the docs, but that doesn't mean it's not there.  lesson
learned -- if it makes sense and should be that way, why not try it anyway?

anyway, is it still possible to create a database in an alternate location
by specifying an absolute path name?  if it isn't, there are several places
in the docs that are misleading, especially since it worked in 6.3.2.  and
maybe some explicit mention of PGDATAX with X>2 for us stupid people.

thanks for jogging my memory and making me try a couple of things,

jeff